Handling
A fresh truffle is at its best for seven days from delivery, and it loses something every day you wait. Here's how to hold onto it, and what to do with it.
Open the box. Put the truffle in the refrigerator. Do that before you read the rest of this.
Then, when you have a minute:
Don't wash it until you're about to use it. A dry brush takes the soil off. Never store it in rice — rice draws out the moisture and the aroma with it. Never vacuum seal it.
Black truffle — Périgord, Australian — wants heat and fat. Its aroma is locked in and opens when it's warmed in butter, cream, or egg. Grate some into the fat early and shave the rest over the plate. Cooked hard, it fades; warmed through, it fills the room.
White truffle — Alba — is never cooked. Heat destroys it. Shave it raw, at the table, over something hot enough to lift the aroma: risotto, eggs, buttered pasta. Thin, and a great deal of it.
More than you think. Restaurants shave in measured grams because they're paying by the gram and serving a room. You're serving a table. Twelve grams a person is the floor. There is no ceiling. A 100-gram box is five to eight people at that rate.
Put the eggs in the jar with the truffle the night before you scramble them. The shells are porous. The eggs will taste of truffle before you've shaved anything.
Serves four. 40–50g black truffle.
Tagliatelle, fresh if you can get it. While it cooks, melt 4 tablespoons butter in a wide pan over low heat and grate half the truffle into it. Don't let it fry. Pull the pasta a minute early into the pan with a ladle of its water and toss until the sauce clings. Salt. Shave the rest of the truffle over the top at the table, until the pasta disappears.
Serves two. 20–30g black truffle, and the eggs that slept in the jar with it.
Six eggs, beaten with a pinch of salt. 2 tablespoons butter in a cold pan, then low heat. Stir constantly, off and on the flame, until the eggs are barely set and still glossy — pull them before you think they're done. Grate a third of the truffle in as they finish. Shave the rest over the plate. Toast on the side, nothing else.
Serves four as a first course. 30g black truffle.
Flour tortillas and a cheese that melts clean — low-moisture mozzarella, with a handful of Asiago grated in. Grate the truffle into the shredded cheese and let it sit twenty minutes. Butter a pan over medium heat, tortilla down, cheese, a second tortilla. Press. Flip when the bottom is blistered. Cut into wedges. Serve them fast.
Serves four. 30–40g white truffle, shaved raw at the table.
1½ cups Carnaroli. Sweat a shallot in butter, toast the rice, add a splash of white wine and let it go. Hot stock, a ladle at a time, stirring, for about eighteen minutes. Off the heat: 3 tablespoons cold butter and a handful of grated Parmigiano, beaten in hard until it's loose and glossy. Plate it. Bring the truffle and the shaver to the table and don't stop until you can't see the rice.
Sending a box as a gift? Send them this page.
A text when each drop opens. Nothing else. Unsubscribe anytime.
Or text TRUFFLE to (415) 742-7870